2018 year in review
Since 2012, I have written a year-in-review post to detail and share highlights and challenges of the previous year. So as is tradition, here is my review of 2018.
Blog
WP Simple Pay joins the Sandhills Development family
I am excited to share that WP Simple Pay has joined Sandhills Development. WP Simple Pay, led by Phil Derksen, launched four years ago with the goal of offering a simple way to integrate Stripe payments into WordPress. It has stayed true to its goal and continues to be an excellent way to process payments…
Simple Google Maps Shortcode plugin has new home with WebFactory
In October, 2012, I released a plugin called Simple Google Maps Shortcode. It was a very simple plugin that simply registered a shortcode that could be used to display a Google map of any address on a post or page. The plugin was simple, efficient, and did just the one thing very well. Overtime it grew to more than 10,000 active installs and is still actively used on thousands of sites. Today I’m happy to announce that the plugin has a new home and has been acquired by WebFactory.
New website and branding for Sugar Calendar
Today I’m really excited to announce the launch of a new, dedicated website for Sugar Calendar! Say hello to sugarcalendar.com.
This is the first in a large series of updates we are working on for our sweet and simple event calendar plugin for WordPress. In the coming months you will see new features released, improved interfaces, numerous add-on plugins, and a whole lot more!
Full Screen Background Images Pro acquired by Scott DeLuzio
Full Screen Background Images Pro is a plugin I first built seven years ago that allows site owners to easily configure background images on their site that scales automatically based on the browser size. As one of my earlier plugins, I’m thrilled to announce that it has a new owner and home. Last week, Scott DeLuzio and I came to agreement for him to take over sales, development, and support of the plugin.
2017 in review
As is my tradition at the end of each year, I’d like to share experiences, failures, and successes from 2017.
Discontinuing memberships on Pippin’s Plugins
Six years ago I announced the launch of premium memberships to Pippin’s Plugins for access to advanced tutorials, code reviews, and other member-only benefits. I have been continually humbled by the response and support my memberships received from the WordPress community and I would like to sincerely thank everyone that signed up. Today, however, I have discontinued memberships to this site.
Automatic license renewals: twenty months later
About twenty months ago, while sitting on a couch in Auckland, New Zealand, my team and I flipped the switch to enable automatic renewals for AffiliateWP. Two months later we did the same thing for Easy Digital Downloads and Restrict Content Pro. This was a move that we had been working towards for nearly a year and it’s one that we believed would fundamentally change the position of the company over the next one to two years. Now that it has been twenty months, maybe we can answer the question: were we right? Did it make a significant impact for us or was it all futile hopes?
Reflection on a price increase
On December 14, 2016, my team and I pushed a significant change to our Easy Digital Downloads products: we increased the price on all extensions by 50-250%. Yes, you read that right: up to a 250% price increase on certain plugins. This change was done for a number of reasons, which I will get into shortly, and has resulted in a very interesting last three months. Since I have always been very open with my company’s financials, I would like to now share some reflections on the change that we made and to also share some of the aftermath of the change.
Sugar Event Calendar 1.6 released
Sugar Event Calendar, my simple event calendar plugin for WordPress has just received a large update that resolves a few long-standing issues and introduces several new features, including category filtering of calendars, better mobile display, improved event list widgets, and several new calendar display types.
2016 in review
It is that time of year again! As in years past, I like to look back on the previous twelve months and see how we did. In this year’s review, I will share revenue numbers, challenges, achievements, insights, and more about my business building and selling WordPress plugins.
WordPress Page builder plugins: a critical review
Page builders are everywhere and new ones are popping up every month. I have always had a strong dislike for page builder plugins as they frequently cause compatibility problems with other plugins. To ensure I wasn’t unjustly biased, I decided to review as many page builders as I could manage to determine if they are really all that bad.
Rebuilding a dying product
Four and a half years ago, I released Restrict Content Pro on Code Canyon.net. It was not my first big plugin, nor even the second, but it was the first one that I developed a more intimate relationship with. I heavily relied on the plugin for my own site and thus had a greater commitment to it than the large plugins that came before. For the first two years, the plugin thrived. I updated it constantly and continued to push it further and further. In 2014, however, I began to lose touch with the plugin as my other two big projects, Easy Digital Downloads and AffiliateWP, dominated more and more of my time.
I continued to let Restrict Content Pro dwindle for nearly two years before making a decision. I had several options. I could let it die a slow, drawn out death, I could sell it, or I could work to bring it back to life and let it kick ass again.
The monster that is a poor database schema
Step back in time two, three, four, or even 10 years and take a look at the development decisions you made then. What do you notice about them? Unless you are a one-in-a-million statistic, you probably look at those past decisions and say to yourself what was I thinking?! Why did I do it that way?! Welcome to the real world of actual development.
Hardships and victories in four years of eCommerce
Four years ago, I started out on a journey to build an eCommerce plugin for myself so that I could sell a few of the plugins I was building. A plugin to sell plugins, how meta. As with most of the projects I choose to dedicate my time and energy to, Easy Digital Downloads was built for me by me but in such a way that others could make use of it if they wished. Today, Easy Digital Downloads is installed on over 50,000 websites, has reached nearly one million downloads, and has grown to a sustainable business that supports the livelihood of an ever-growing team comprised of full time employees and active contractors.
